Event announcement: National Fund Conference "Remembrance and Responsibility" on 15 October 2024

Remembrance and Responsibility: The Future of Remembrance and the Work to Come to Terms with the Nazi Era in Austria.

Outlook for the Year of Remembrance 2025: Eighty Years Since the End of the Second World War and the Founding of the Second Republic.

Content:

The first conference of the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism will take a look back at the past and forward to the future, uniting them under one mantle. It will offer a comprehensive review of the work to come to terms with the Nazi era in Austria and shine a light on its achievements and the projects that have been implemented. This will pave the way for a discussion on what form remembrance in Austria should take moving forward and which areas need to be addressed to continue to live up to the responsibility towards the victims of National Socialism and their descendants in the future.

The National Fund will hold a conference annually in accordance with the latest amendment to the National Fund Law in 2024.

Programme:

Opening words

Wolfgang Sobotka
President of the National Council
Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism and the Fund for the Restoration of the Jewish Cemeteries in Austria

Introduction

Hannah Lessing
Managing Director of the National Fund

Keynote speeches

Katja Sturm-Schnabl
Philologist, Honorary Senator of the University of Vienna and contemporary eyewitness

Brigitte Bailer
Historian, University of Vienna
Member of the Committee of the National Fund

Elke Rajal
Political scientist, University of Passau
Coordinator of the Research Network 31 on Racism and Antisemitism in the European Sociological Association

Conversation with memorial service members

Moritz Gemel
Memorial Service 2023/24 at the Holocaust and Genocide Centre, Cape Town, South Africa

Philipp Auberger
Memorial Service 2023/24 at the Azrieli Foundation, Toronto, Canada

Tabea Chaharlangi
Memorial Service 2023/24 at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel and at the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, Vilnius, Lithuania

Panel discussion

Oskar Deutsch
President of the Jewish Community Vienna
Member of the Board of Trustees of the National Fund

Barbara Glück
Director of the Mauthausen Memorial
Member of the Board of Trustees of the National Fund

Susanne Janistyn-Novák
Parliamentary Vice-Director
Member of the Committee of the National Fund

Andreas Kranebitter
Managing Scientific Director of the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance

Moritz Wein
Deputy Head of Department, Holocaust Education/Remembrance Policy, Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research

Moderated by Hannah Lessing, Managing Director of the National Fund

Moderation

Judith Pfeffer
Managing Director of the National Fund

Reception

Registration

For more information and to register for the event please visit the Parliament's website.

Registration is open until 13.10.2024.

Doors open one hour before the event.